Top House and Senate Democrats said they trust President-elect Trump’s administration to safeguard intelligence secrets and they believe American allies should, too.
“I have every confidence in our intelligence agencies to protect the information they receive and the sources of that information,” California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Washington Examiner.
That confidence is at odds with some of the public Democratic complaints about Trump’s compliments toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin’s management of “an influence campaign” against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., compared Russian interference in the election to “a spreading cancer” and called for a broad investigation of their actions.
But on the substantive question of whether allies should trust Trump, leading Democrats said yes.
“I would encourage them to continue to share intelligence with us,” Schiff emphasized. “Those relationships are very important to us and very important in our ability to help them protect themselves.”
Schiff’s remarks also conflict with a warning that U.S. intelligence officials reportedly delivered to Israeli intelligence operatives in a recent meeting.
“The Americans implied that their Israeli colleagues should ‘be careful’ as of Jan. 20, Trump’s inauguration date, when transferring intelligence information to the White House and to the National Security Council (NSC), which is subject to the president,” Ronen Bergman, a senior correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth and a contributor to New York Times Magazine, wrote in a Thursday report.
“According to the Israelis who were present in the meeting, the Americans recommended that until it is made clear that Trump is not inappropriately connected to Russia and is not being extorted – Israel should avoid revealing sensitive sources to administration officials for fear the information would reach the Iranians,” he wrote.
Senior Democrats dismissed that alarm. Durbin, who led the Senate Democrats in denouncing Trump following a classified briefing on Russian interference in the election, suggested that allies should worry only that information sent electronically might be hacked.
“Virtually everything, I’m told, that goes on the Internet is subject to being stolen,” Durbin told the Washington Examiner. “There could be situations like that where there is a vulnerability we’ve identified saying to them ‘in communications with the United States don’t come down this channel.'”
But the lawmakers don’t expect Trump to leak intelligence. “I would not believe that is a risk factor,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I think this is handled at the professional levels and it’s not a risk factor.”
